[HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Potterverse characters and tea.

[P. Alexis Nguyen]

montims:
> Oh my goodness - you haven't lived until you have been in Austria or Germany
> and had their coffee and cake with cream. Please forget any comparisons you
> might think to make with the American practice of squirting white stuff on
> cake or pie - this is real cream and tastes exquisite. And a close second
> to that is good clotted cream (again, not the stuff you might be able to
> find in a jar in some fancy shops) with a freshly baked scone (English
> style, not the kind you can buy in the USA).

Um...I am "squirting white stuff" on my cakes & pies all the time.
It's kind of great, whipped all nice and fluffy with vanilla & sugar
(and the occasional nip of liqueur), though it tends to remind me of
eating solid fat (which it pretty much is) if I decide to indulge in
the little too much.

The simple fact is this:  cream will vary in taste & texture with
geography due to variances in the diets of the animals producing the
cream.  (For example, that talk of butter-yellow cream will be totally
foreign to many Americans.  Our cream is white, and our cows don't
seem to want to change that - it's also partly why US butter is
lighter in colour than European butters, though that difference in
taste in the butters is also attributable to differences in production
techniques, which reminds me that I'm rather desperate for the red
cans of real Buerre Bretagne from my youth.)

Re: scones.  You can most certainly get a good scone in the US so long
as you get it from a decent bakery - in other words, English-style
but, as with the cream, it won't be tasting like English scones
because, well, the ingredients aren't the same (for one, we're not
using the same butters) - as a somewhat related sidenote, I really
like it when my scones have the thinnest crunchy-crisp exterior and a
cloud-soft yet dense interior.  It's same deal with the ubiquitous
American biscuits (a scone in disguise, really): you can get some
really bad ones, and you can get some fabulous ones - again, on a
somewhat related sidenote, I've finally perfected my biscuit recipe
this past summer, an accomplishment I deem totally awesome and worthy
of my 25th year of life.  It's all in the roll of the dice whether
you're lucky or not.

And yes, you can get clotted cream, creme fraiche, and all those other
artery-hardening items in the US, too.

~ Ali, who should [but doesn't want to] stop avoiding her work since
the workday is now 3 hrs from over